[Sunday, January 1, 2012] New observations from Cassini flybys of Enceladus in 2008 are revealing new details about the plasma environment around Enceladus and how it may affect Saturn's magnetosphere. These observations could also shed some light on the SKR rotation rate.

[Sunday, January 1, 2012] Saturn's moon Tethys, with its stark white icy surface, peeps out from behind the larger, hazy, colorful Titan in this Cassini view of the two moons. Saturn's rings lie between the two.

[Sunday, January 1, 2012] The second of NASA's two Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft has successfully completed its planned main engine burn and is now in lunar orbit. Working together, GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B will study the moon as never before.

[Monday, January 2, 2012] Opportunity is positioned at a candidate site for Mars' southern hemisphere winter. The rover is at the north end of 'Cape York' on the rim of Endeavour Crater, tilted about 15 degrees to the north for favorable solar energy production.

»»NASA LRO Lunar Image: A Detailed Look at the Walls of Crater Aristarchus

[Monday, January 2, 2012] No wonder planners for the Apollo missions put this plateau high on its list of targets for human exploration. This amazing image was acquired on 10 November 2011 as LRO passed north-to-south about 70 km east of the crater's center.

»»Season's Greetings From the Other Extreme: Concordia Research Base in Antarctica

[Monday, January 2, 2012] It is summer in Antarctica and the new crew for the Concordia research station will soon arrive. And since the place is second only to space for harsh conditions, they have been trained courtesy of ESA.

[Tuesday, January 3, 2012] The crater at the center of this image is named Dickens, after Charles Dickens, the English novelist who lived from 1812 to 1870. Among Dickens' famous works is A Christmas Carol.

[Tuesday, January 3, 2012] Sand dunes in the North polar region of Mars are covered every winter by a layer of carbon dioxide ice (dry ice). In the springtime the ice on the dunes cracks, often in polygonal patterns.

[Tuesday, January 3, 2012] The competition challenges students and young professionals worldwide to develop new ideas and perspectives on opportunities and challenges facing space entrepreneurs and investors today.

[Tuesday, January 3, 2012] With this in mind, researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory are looking into a novel approach that could some day aid scientific space and planetary research without the need for power-intense options often used today.

»»Subaru's Sharp Eye Confirms Signs of Unseen Planets in the Dust Ring of HR 4796 A

[Tuesday, January 3, 2012] The SEEDS project, a five-year international collaboration launched in 2009 and led by Motohide Tamura of NAOJ has yielded another impressive image that contributes to our understanding of the link between disks and planet formation.

[Wednesday, January 4, 2012] The end of December marks the end of spring and beginning of summer along the coast of East Antarctica. The Sun shines most (if not all) of the time, yet ice still dominates the land and sea. That ice, however, is far from uniform.

[Wednesday, January 4, 2012] Using powerful magnets to levitate fruit flies can provide vital clues to how biological organisms are affected by weightless conditions in space, researchers at The University of Nottingham say.

[Wednesday, January 4, 2012] Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed a computer model of Titan's atmosphere and methane cycle that, for the first time, explains many of these phenomena in a relatively simple and coherent way.

[Wednesday, January 4, 2012] A new NASA and University of Washington study allays concerns that melting Arctic sea ice could be increasing the amount of freshwater in the Arctic enough to have an impact on the global "ocean conveyor belt" that redistributes heat around our planet.

[Thursday, January 5, 2012] Dawn concludes 2011 more than 40,000 times nearer to Vesta than it began the year. Now at its lowest altitude of the mission, Dawn is conducting its most detailed exploration of this alien world and continuing to make thrilling new discoveries.

[Thursday, January 5, 2012] The two service modules shown below are being integrated and assembled in a class 100,000 clean room prior to the beginning of environmental testing, the last major phase of the spacecraft development and testing prior to shipment.

[Thursday, January 5, 2012] The FIRST Robotics Competition kickoff marks the beginning of the season for high school students to design and build a robot to compete in a tournament against a field of competitors.

[Thursday, January 5, 2012] This impact crater is approximately one kilometer in diameter. The ejecta blanket (remnants of the material from the original impact) is still visible indicating that the crater may be very fresh.

[Thursday, January 5, 2012] The Advanced Land Imager on the EO-1 satellite captured this natural-color image of the island and its offshore eruption on December 16, 2011. The eruption is located about one kilometer south-southwest of the town of La Restinga.

»»Infrared Image: Los Angeles Metropolitan Area As Seen From the International Space Station

[Thursday, January 5, 2012] This night time infrared image of the Los Angeles metropolitan area was photographed by an Expedition 30 crew member aboard the International Space Station on Dec. 25 (though it was late Dec. 24 in California).

[Thursday, January 5, 2012] The new program will stimulate new activities in research and development of both the existing radio infrastructures as well as telescopes of the future due to be completed within the next decade.

[Thursday, January 5, 2012] More than 500 students from middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities in 29 states will show their rocketeering prowess in the 2011-12 NASA Student Launch Projects flight challenge.

[Thursday, January 5, 2012] On December 16, 2011, a decade of hard work culminated at the Gemini South telescope in Chile, when a next-generation adaptive optics (AO) system produced its first ultra-sharp wide field image.

[Friday, January 6, 2012] Top: The International Space Station flies over the face of the Moon as seen from Houston, Texas on 4 January 2012. Bottom: An Ares-1B spacecraft heads toward the Moon in the film "2001: A Space Odyssey" in 1968.

[Friday, January 6, 2012] The signals below are undoubtedly examples of terrestrial radio frequency interference (RFI). .. These signals look similar to what we think might be produced from an extraterrestrial technology.

[Friday, January 6, 2012] Scientists have uncovered a lot about the Earth's greatest extinction event that took place 250 million years ago. Now, they have discovered a new culprit likely involved in the annihilation: an influx of mercury into the eco-system.

»»Mars Rover to Spend Winter at 'Greeley Haven' named for late ASU geologist Ronald Greeley

[Friday, January 6, 2012] NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity will spend the next few months during the coldest part of Martian winter at Greeley Haven, an outcrop of rock on Mars recently named informally to honor ASU Regents' Professor Ronald Greeley.

[Friday, January 6, 2012] While camped in the mountains of Antarctica at Lake Untersee, we did have a few storms move through bringing high winds and blowing snow. Our winds topped out at 50 m/s (110 mph) at the lake. This short video shows a small example.

[Saturday, January 7, 2012] The solar arrays, shielded by protective covers during launch, deploy just minutes after Dragon separates from the Falcon 9 second stage, as it heads towards its rendezvous with the Space Station.

»»Book Review: Fifty Years on the Space Frontier: Halo Orbits, Comets, Asteroids, and More

[Sunday, January 8, 2012] Most people have never heard of Robert Farquhar outside of NASA - and that is a shame. The cover of this book says it all. Look at this exquisite orbit Farquhar created to take an old spacecraft so as to repurpose it and throw it at not one but two comet

»»Space Station Photo: Comet Lovejoy Streaks Through the Star-filled Night Sky Over Chile

[Monday, January 9, 2012] This busy night time panorama was photographed by one of the Expedition 30 crew members from the International Space Station on Dec. 26, 2011. Comet Lovejoy streaks through the star-filled sky just to the right of center.

[Monday, January 9, 2012] The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center (ARC) is releasing a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Edison Small Satellite Flight Demonstration Missions in support of the Office of Chief Technologist (OCT).

[Monday, January 9, 2012] These are American heroes, fellow astronauts, and personal friends who have acted in good faith, and we have committed to work together to find the right policy and legal paths forward to address outstanding ownership questions.

[Monday, January 9, 2012] The appointment of LtCol Damphousse coincides with the 25th anniversary of the 1987 merger of the National Space Institute (NSI) and the L5 Society to form the National Space Society.

[Tuesday, January 10, 2012] Kuzma's hiring is one of several organizational changes to help create capacity for improved client responsiveness, better face a dynamic marketplace and take advantage of increased business development opportunities in the aerospace industry.

»»Scientists Searching for Earth-type Planets Should COnsider Two-Star System

[Tuesday, January 10, 2012] A group of astrophysicists from The University of Texas at Arlington plans to expand the discussion about a newly discovered planet orbiting two stars by presenting a study suggesting where an Earth-type planet could exist in the system.

[Tuesday, January 10, 2012] NASA/MSFC is hereby seeking potential sources to provide an Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) for the early Space Launch System (SLS) missions. Recently, NASA announced the architecture of the SLS with a manifested first flight in late 2017.

[Tuesday, January 10, 2012] A turning point in the history of life occurred 2 - 3 billion years ago with the appearance and dramatic rise of molecular oxygen. Researchers have identified an enzyme that was the first - or among the first - to generate molecular oxygen on Earth.

[Tuesday, January 10, 2012] An exceptional galaxy cluster, the largest seen in the distant universe, has been found using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation-funded Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile.

[Tuesday, January 10, 2012] An exceptional galaxy cluster, the largest seen in the distant universe, has been found using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation-funded Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile.

[Tuesday, January 10, 2012] NASA's Third Rock Radio just got mobile. Updates to the NASA App for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Android now include a feature to listen to the agency's new online alternative rock radio station.

[Wednesday, January 11, 2012] Space Florida, the State's aerospace economic development organization, has announced details of a sub-orbital flight program intended to stimulate market interest in microgravity research via sub-orbital and parabolic flights from Florida.

[Wednesday, January 11, 2012] Astronomers using the partially completed ALMA observatory have found compelling evidence for how star-forming galaxies evolve into 'red and dead' elliptical galaxies, catching a large group of galaxies right in the middle of this change.

[Wednesday, January 11, 2012] Astronomers, including members from the Niels Bohr Institute, have discovered that most of the Milky Way's 100 billion stars have planets that are very similar to the Earth-like planets in our own solar system

[Wednesday, January 11, 2012] When you really want to see a place, sometimes a map just isn't enough. Since 2000, scientists with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have been meticulously scanning the sky to create a map of our universe.

»»The Milky Way Contains At Least 100 Billion Planets According to Survey

[Wednesday, January 11, 2012] Our Milky Way galaxy contains a minimum of 100 billion planets according to a detailed statistical study based on the detection of three extrasolar planets by an observational technique called microlensing.

[Wednesday, January 11, 2012] The discovery of the three smallest planets yet orbiting a distant star, which was announced today at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, has an unusual connection to Barnard's star, one of the Sun's nearest neighbors.

[Thursday, January 12, 2012] A team of astronomers led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has discovered the three smallest confirmed planets ever detected outside our solar system.

[Thursday, January 12, 2012] The relocation of the RS-25D space shuttle main engine inventory from Kennedy Space Center's Engine Shop is underway. The RS-25D flight engines, repurposed for NASA's Space Launch System, are being moved to NASA's Stennis Space Center.

[Friday, January 13, 2012] NASA will host a news conference at 1 p.m. EST, Tuesday, Jan. 17, to announce the names selected from a nationwide student contest for twin spacecraft that will study the Moon in unprecedented detail.

[Friday, January 13, 2012] Mars Images lets you browse the latest images from the Opportunity Mars Exploration Rover. Scroll through the thumbnails of the latest downlink from Mars and view any image in fullscreen mode.

[Friday, January 13, 2012] Opportunity is positioned for winter on the north end of "Cape York" on the rim of Endeavour Crater. The rover is tilted about 15 degrees to the north for favorable solar energy production.

[Friday, January 13, 2012] A new study led by a NASA scientist highlights 14 key air pollution control measures that, if implemented, could slow the pace of global warming, improve health and boost agricultural production.

[Friday, January 13, 2012] The collision of two clusters of galaxies 5 billion light-years away could help astronomers better understand "dark matter," the invisible stuff that makes up about a quarter of our universe.

[Friday, January 13, 2012] NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) researchers have captured new images of a recently born cluster of massive stars named W3A. The cluster is seen lurking in the depths of the large gas and dust cloud from which it formed.

[Friday, January 13, 2012] The cold dust that builds blazing stars is revealed in new images that combine observations from the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions; and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

[Friday, January 13, 2012] The stars we see today weren't always as serene as they appear, floating alone in the dark of night. Most stars, likely including our own sun, grew up in cosmic turmoil, as illustrated in this new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

[Friday, January 13, 2012] New maps produced by the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal features at the Moon's northern and southern poles in regions that lie in perpetual darkness.

»»Habitability of Earth-type Planets and Moons in the Kepler-16 System

[Monday, January 16, 2012] We demonstrate that habitable Earth-type planets and moons can exist in the Kepler-16 system by investigating their orbital stability in the standard and extended habitable zone (HZ).

[Monday, January 16, 2012] Engineers with NASA's Cassini mission are conducting diagnostic testing on a part of the spacecraft's radio system after its signal was not detected on Earth during a tracking pass in late December.

[Monday, January 16, 2012] In preparation for the upcoming launch, SpaceX continues to conduct extensive testing and analysis. We believe that there are a few areas that will benefit from additional work and will optimize the safety and success of this mission.

[Monday, January 16, 2012] The High Frequency Instrument on ESA's Planck mission has completed its survey of the remnant light from the Big Bang. The sensor ran out of coolant on Saturday as expected, ending its ability to detect this faint energy.

[Monday, January 16, 2012] This new image shows the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy in infrared light as seen by the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions, and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

[Tuesday, January 17, 2012] More than 500 million years ago, single-celled organisms on Earth's surface began forming multi-cellular clusters that ultimately became plants and animals. Just how that happened is a question that has eluded evolutionary biologists.

[Tuesday, January 17, 2012] Music has accompanied humans into space since the earliest years of spaceflight. Music and space, it seems, have a deep association, with some pieces becoming permanently connected with space in popular culture.

[Tuesday, January 17, 2012] While the concept may be based on Minority Report, the HD video that promotes the Cocoon is an amazing reconstruction of the last scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey, with Keir Dullea reprising the role he played over forty years ago.

[Tuesday, January 17, 2012] The ESA Herschel Space Observatory's new image shows the pillars and the wide field of gas and dust around them. Captured in far-infrared wavelengths, the image allows astronomers to see inside the pillars and structures in the region.

»»Online Chat About NSF-Funded Antarctic Discoveries to Mark the 100th Anniversary of South Pole "Race"

[Tuesday, January 17, 2012] You are invited to participate in a live online chat on January 19 from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. EST with two eminent scientists about cutting-edge research currently being conducted by the U.S. Antarctic Program in Antarctica.

»»New Report Outlines Trends in U.S. Global Competitiveness in Science and Technology

[Wednesday, January 18, 2012] The United States remains the global leader in supporting science and technology (S&T) research and development, but only by a slim margin that could soon be overtaken by rapidly increasing Asian investments in knowledge-intensive economies.

[Wednesday, January 18, 2012] Astronomers, physicists and scientists from related fields across the world will convene in Tucson, Ariz. Jan. 18-20 to discuss an endeavor that only a few years ago would have been regarded as nothing less than outrageous.

[Wednesday, January 18, 2012] Two teams of physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have independently made the largest direct measurements of the invisible scaffolding of the universe, building maps of dark matter

»»Photo: Looking Westward After Sunset From The International Space Station

[Wednesday, January 18, 2012] This is a panoramic view of Earth's atmospheric limb photographed by an Expedition 30 crew member aboard the International Space Station when it was over a point centered approximately at 41.5 degrees north latitude and 179.9 degrees west longitude.

»»Fact Sheet: An International Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities

[Wednesday, January 18, 2012] Space is vital to protecting U.S. economic prosperity and the national security interests of the United States, its allies, and partners. The benefits derived from space-based systems permeate almost every aspect of our daily life.

[Wednesday, January 18, 2012] A swath of blue jewels across the top is the combined light from clusters of intensely bright and hot young blue stars. These massive stars glow fiercely in ultraviolet light.

[Thursday, January 19, 2012] NASA will join DARPA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and high school student teams from the U.S. and abroad for the third annual Zero Robotics SPHERES Challenge on Monday, Jan. 23.

[Thursday, January 19, 2012] Congress has requested that an agency-wide assessment be commissioned to "evaluate whether NASA's overall strategic direction remains viable and whether agency management is optimized to support that direction."

[Thursday, January 19, 2012] The EU's Galileo satellite navigation programme should get proper long-term funding and its GMES earth observation programme should be officially included in the EU's long-term budget, according to a report by Italian EPP member Aldo Patriciello.

[Thursday, January 19, 2012] Final checkout of Europe's new Vega launcher was completed last Friday, marking another milestone towards its maiden flight from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

[Thursday, January 19, 2012] Sixty space experiment proposals have been selected as finalists in the YouTube Space Lab student science competition, co-sponsored by ESA. Judges must now select the two top entries to be flown on the International Space Station.

[Thursday, January 19, 2012] Volcanic-hydrothermal flow channels offer a chemically unique environment, which at first glance appears hostile to life. It is defined by cracks in the crust of the earth, through which water flows, laden with volcanic gases are contacting a diversity of

[Thursday, January 19, 2012] This picture, taken in infrared light, reveals strands of cold nebular gas that are invisible in images taken in visible light, as well as bringing to light a rich background of stars and galaxies.

[Thursday, January 19, 2012] Astronomers have detected a mysterious ring of carbon monoxide gas around the young star V1052 Cen, which is about 700 light-years away in the southern constellation Centaurus.

[Thursday, January 19, 2012] Scientists have long struggled to detect the dim dwarf galaxies that orbit our own galaxy. It came as a surprise when a team of astronomers using Keck II telescope's adaptive optics announced the discovery of a dwarf galaxy halfway across the universe.

[Thursday, January 19, 2012] Searching the literature, we found 25 stars with directly imaged planets and candidates. We gathered photometric and spectral information for all these objects to derive their luminosities in a homogeneous way.

[Thursday, January 19, 2012] The global average surface temperature in 2011 was the ninth warmest since 1880, according to NASA scientists. The finding continues a trend in which nine of the 10 warmest years in the modern meteorological record have occurred since the year 2000.

[Thursday, January 19, 2012] Scientists from NAI's New York Center for Astrobiology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have used the oldest minerals on Earth to reconstruct the atmospheric conditions present on Earth very soon after its birth.

[Sunday, January 22, 2012] Researchers say their new stronger and more efficient continuous wave T-rays could be used to make better medical scanning gadgets and may one day lead to innovations similar to the 'tricorder' scanner used in Star Trek.

[Sunday, January 22, 2012] NASA is accepting applications from science and engineering post-docs, recent PhDs, and doctoral students for its 24th Annual Planetary Science Summer School, which will hold two separate sessions this summer.

[Monday, January 23, 2012] A new analysis of radar data from the international Cassini spacecraft has revealed regional variations amongst Titan's sand dunes. The result yields new clues to the giant moon's climatic and geological history.

[Monday, January 23, 2012] Students gathered at The University of Virginia College at Wise will speak with Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineer Don Pettit aboard the International Space Station at 9:20 a.m. EST on Thursday, Jan. 26.

[Monday, January 23, 2012] The Coalition for Space Exploration (Coalition) today announced veteran aerospace communicators Lon Rains of Northrop Grumman and Mary Engola of Ball Aerospace will lead the Coalition in 2012.

[Tuesday, January 24, 2012] Individuals interested in becoming America's future space explorers have until Friday to submit their applications. The deadline to apply for NASA's next astronaut class is Jan. 27.

[Tuesday, January 24, 2012] Today marks the start of the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese calendar, and this year, SpaceX's Dragon will become the first privately developed spacecraft to visit the International Space Station.

[Tuesday, January 24, 2012] A large solar flare yesterday triggered a coronal mass ejection travelling at 1400 km/s that will reach Earth today. An energetic eruption of this level can disrupt satellites, so operation teams at ESA and other organisations are closely monitoring the s

[Wednesday, January 25, 2012] Organic chemists at the University of York have made a significant advance towards establishing the origin of the carbohydrates (sugars) that form the building blocks of life.

»»First laser measurements of Europe's Galileo satellites made from Chile

[Wednesday, January 25, 2012] The first laser ranging of Europe's new Galileo navigation satellites has been achieved from Concepcion in Chile. Laser contact with the satellites at an altitude of 23 230 km has provided distance measurements with subcentimetre accuracy.

[Wednesday, January 25, 2012] NASA has renamed its newest Earth-observing satellite in honor of the late Verner E. Suomi, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin who is recognized widely as "the father of satellite meteorology."

[Wednesday, January 25, 2012] Using the APEX telescope, a team of astronomers has found the strongest link so far between the most powerful bursts of star formation in the early Universe, and the most massive galaxies found today.

[Wednesday, January 25, 2012] School teams from Europe and America have been commanding robots competing in the Spheres ZeroRobotics tournament in space. The arena: 400 km above Earth on the International Space Station.

[Wednesday, January 25, 2012] During the MagISStra mission, ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli attempted to grow plants in space using a miniature greenhouse. Simultaneously, schoolchildren and the crew of Mars500 ran the same educational experiment to compare plant growth.

[Wednesday, January 25, 2012] This mosaic of images taken in mid-January 2012 shows the windswept vista northward from the location where NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is spending its fifth Martian winter, an outcrop informally named "Greeley Haven."

[Wednesday, January 25, 2012] Though generally thought to be quite dry, roughly half of the giant asteroid Vesta is expected to be so cold and to receive so little sunlight that water ice could have survived there for billions of years.

[Thursday, January 26, 2012] This last week of January, as we do every year, the NASA family honors those who have lost their lives carrying out our missions and pays tribute to their lives and memories.

»»Students Across the US Write Code to Control Zero Gravity Satellites on ISS

[Thursday, January 26, 2012] Twenty seven teams of high school students from across the United States competed in the Zero Robotics SPHERES Challenge which took place at MIT in Cambridge, MA and aboard the International Space Station (ISS) this week.

[Thursday, January 26, 2012] These discoveries nearly double the number of verified planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, the star. Such systems will help astronomers better understand how planets form.

[Friday, January 27, 2012] Alexander Kumar, the next ESA-sponsored crewmember to stay in Concordia, has arrived safely at the research base in Antarctica. The voyage to one of the remotest places on Earth takes even longer than the voyage to the International Space Station.

[Friday, January 27, 2012] ESA's new Vega rocket is now fully assembled on its launch pad. Final preparations are in full swing for the rocket's inaugural flight from Europe's Spaceport. The launch window opens on 9 February.

[Sunday, January 29, 2012] By the time it's fully awake in about 20 months, the team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., charged with researching and tracking solar activity, will have at their disposal a greatly enhanced forecasting capability.

[Sunday, January 29, 2012] The largest solar particle event since 2005 hit the Earth, Mars and MSL travelling in-between, allowing the onboard Radiation Assessment Detector to measure the radiation a human astronaut could be exposed to en route to the Red Planet.

[Monday, January 30, 2012] NASA has launched its first multi-player online game to test players' knowledge of the space program. Who was the first American to walk in space? Who launched the first liquid-fueled rocket?

»»XCOR to Give Away Suborbital Research Flight at the Next Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference

[Monday, January 30, 2012] XCOR Aerospace and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) announce the final week to register and become eligible to win a suborbital research flight on XCOR's Lynx I vehicle at the Next Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference.